Caterham F1 Team
Caterham team principal Cyril Abiteboul says he is positive about his team's progress ahead of the mid-season break.
Caterham prop up the Constructors' Championship but has recently made progress, with Giedo van der Garde finishing in fourteenth place in Hungary.
"It’s been an interesting first half of season for the team and for me personally. This is another great F1 season, with battles pretty much everywhere," says Abiteboul.
"As far as we're concerned, we've been fighting with Marussia who have done a great job over the last year. We started the season clearly behind them, but over the last three races a comfortable gap has appeared between us and them, which shows our rate of development. That’s also helped us on a couple of occasions to race a Williams or a Sauber and that shows where we’re setting our targets."
"This progress is positive for the whole team because it shows the aggressive development plan we have for 2013 is delivering."
"We made the decision to carry over the 2012 car to the start of this season for a number of reasons, in particular because this time last year – which is typically the time of the year when you need to produce tooling for the next season’s car - the team was busy moving from one side of the UK to the other, and now we are back ahead of Marussia with the chance to reclaim tenth in the second half of the year."
Abiteboul also retains faith in both drivers and reckons the updated tyres raced in Hungary are more suited to Van der Garde's style, something which could hurt Charles Pic.
"Looking at our drivers - as a rookie, Giedo has had his challenges, but his last race in Hungary was a good reward for his determination and his positive attitude that the team loves. He’s also going to be helped by the new tyres which will definitely suit his style better than those used for the first nine races."
"For Charles, after only one year of experience with Marussia, he immediately made a positive contribution to our development strategy this year and that’s a clear sign of his maturity and of his determination."
"It’s possible the new tyres take away one of his strengths over the other drivers as he was very good at tyre management, but therefore he must adapt and develop other skills in terms of pure race pace to cope with what’s to come. He demands a lot from himself and from us, and I like that. I think that sort of spirit will help push the team forwards."
